Will the government nationalize BTL? That’s the course of action suggested by an Amandala editorial yesterday. And while newspaper editorials don’t set government policy, our information suggests that this one was more than just a shot in the dark, it was more like a trial balloon for an idea that’s gaining some currency in government circles. Speaking with Prime Minister Dean Barrow by telephone today, he was decidedly non committal, saying that as regards the BTL impasse, his government is, “looking at all options” and “what they’ve raised (in the Amandala editorial) is not excluded.”

It would be a bold and unprecedented move, and the consequences wide and far-reaching…but is it the kind of nuclear solution the generally conservative Barrow administration would pursue? That’s left to be seen but a memo sent out to BTL employees yesterday from the employees trust discusses what it calls quote, a “rumor that government may even be considering buying Telemedia.” The trust is a 22% block of shares in the company which is nominally owned by the employees but is managed, controlled, operated and articulated from within the cockpit of some anonymous corporate mother-ship.

BTL today blocked the popular IAX protocol from passing through their VoIP jamming technology. IAX, a VoIP protocol developed in conjuction with the Asterisk Open Source PBX, IAX had been a last place of refuge among users that wished to have inexpensive international phone service in Belize. Previously BTL had limited the blocking to SIP and Sykpe, but today expanded the list to include IAX. It looks as if they may also have blocked a popular chatting protocol called Jabber, most commonly used in Google Talk. Way to go BTL!